With Cyber Monday approaching, we here in the news business are being inundated as usual with offers of "expert advice" for us to pass along to readers/online shoppers so that they may better protect themselves against identity theft.
Most of it we -- and you -- have read a hundred times already. Read more
At least they aren't making any excuses.
From a story on StorefrontBacktalk:
Leaving online shoppers out in the cold with no warnings or explanations (or coats, if that's what they wanted to buy), Burlington Coat Factory took its Web site offline all day Wednesday (Nov. 18)-plus at least four hours-for a planned outage as the $3.5 billion clothing retailer performed an extensive hardware and database upgrade. Read more
I drove to the local mall yesterday -- oh, I'm sorry, it's not a mall, it's called the Natick Collection -- and, despite not owning an iPhone or a copy of the just released "Mall Maps for the iPhone" application, managed to park, enter, shop and leave the sprawling complex in about 30 minutes with a serviceable birthday gift for my wife. Read more
Last week, just for kicks, we explored this question posed by the Web site performance monitoring company Pingdom: What caused a significant traffic spike on Twitter the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 27? Read more
The Web site performance monitoring company Pingdom tracked Twitter traffic for three weeks and in addition to accumulating a bunch of interesting data left us with the question in the headline. Read more
This is an inside-baseball post written primarily for users of the social news-sharing Web site Digg, so those of you uninterested in such matters are free to move about the cabin. Read more
We've all seen lamps with phone jacks in hotel rooms. Well, here's a lamp that plugs into a phone jack in your home and operates by filching the trickle of electricity found there. Read more
In a ruling that should surprise no one, California Ninth Circuit Court Judge Jeremy Fogel has dismissed a lawsuit filed by ZL Technologies that accused Gartner of committing a host of illegalities simply through its placement of ZL's e-mail archiving software in the "niche" box of Gartner's famously controversial Magic Quadrant. Read more
Forbes this morning has an interesting account of the ongoing trademark dispute between Google and Android Data Corp. of Palatine, Ill. The gist is that Google has decided to fight legal fire with legal fire, presumably to discourage other would-be litigants.
From that story: Read more
Allow me an inconsequential rant: I'm driving to work on Rte. 495, a major north-south highway west of Boston, when I encounter this electronic road sign:
First message: "Construction ahead."
OK, thanks for the heads up.
Second message: "Be prepared to stop."
Now this irritates me on at least two levels.
First, a state-issued driver's license should convey an implied acknowledgment that the recipient is sharp enough to understand that construction work on a highway may at times call upon passersby to bring their vehicles to a halt. Goes without saying maybe?
Second and even more puzzling: Is there any time during the standard operation of a motor vehicle when one need not be prepared to stop?
Just asking.
Here's Richard Marcello of Unisys extolling one of what he sees as the virtues of cloud computing yesterday at the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara: Read more
Facebook claims an astonishing 300 million active users worldwide, which roughly equals the population of the United States. Web monitoring company Pingdom uses its blog to show with a series of maps how this growth has played out since 2004. It's an interesting way to look at it.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation today has aimed a demonstrably potent weapon -- the spotlight of public shame -- at those corporations and individuals who abuse copyright claims to stifle free speech.
From an EFF press release:
"Free speech in the 21st century often depends on incorporating video clips and other content from various sources," explained EFF Senior Staff Attorney and Kahle Promise Fellow Corynne McSherry. "It's what The Daily Show with Jon Stewart does every night. This is 'fair use' of copyrighted or trademarked material and protected under U.S. law. But that hasn't stopped thin-skinned corporations and others from abusing the legal system to get these new works removed from the Internet. We wanted to document this censorship for all to see." Read more
As a promotion for its new "Trivial Pursuit Team" offering, game maker Hasbro has foisted upon the Internet an "experiment" that threatens to permanently undermine men's largely self-anointed standing as the masters of minutiae.
(More trivia: So you think you know Apple?)
It's a battle of the sexes, all right, and so far the women have opened up a can on the men.
The "experiment," which began Oct. 7 and runs through Dec. 31, is simple and the rules even simpler: You go to Hasbro's special Trivial Pursuit Web site, announce your gender, and start answering questions in the categories -- art/literature, sports/leisure, science/nature, geography, history and entertainment -- that are familiar to anyone who has ever ruined an otherwise tranquil family gathering with a bout of the classic board game. Every correct answer earns your "team" a point. Read more
Word comes this afternoon that a federal judge has rejected a class-action lawsuit settlement that would have seen TD Ameritrade escape with less than a wrist slap in an egregious data-breach case that touched as many as six million customers and calls for at least a public flogging.
According to Associated Press: Read more
Everything else is moving online, why not panhandling? The Boston Globe this morning has a story about the growing trend of the homeless and unemployed looking for hand-outs on the Internet instead of on the street.
From the article:
Some homeless people now have blogs where they seek donations. There are web forums where the homeless exchange ideas, sites where people can donate money, and bulletin boards where penniless artists and foreclosure victims ask for cash. There's even a Wikipedia entry for "Internet begging,'' which is one of more than 3 million websites listed by a Google search of the term.
Better than the alternative? I guess so. Still sad.
It's a week before Halloween (my birthday) and that's all the excuse I need to veer off topic as we head into the weekend.
(This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries)
A few days ago, my wife Julie forwarded me an e-mail newsletter from Roto-Rooter -- I didn't ask why she's on such a list -- because it had useful tips about how and how not to dispose of Jack-o-Lantern innards. That was interesting enough, I thought, given that such advice could only serve to reduce the demand for Roto-Rooter's services, but what caught my eye was another item near the bottom of the newsletter: "Did you know ... In 1979, Roto-Rooter created a popular TV commercial called 'The Raving,' which was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem 'The Raven.' It's still popular today." Read more
My longtime friend and former colleague Chris Nerney makes a couple of interesting points -- loathe though I am to acknowledge the fact -- in his filleting of Fortune's "40 under 40" list that the magazine labels: "Business's hottest rising stars." Read more
This won't be a long post so I'm going to make you wait until the end before revealing the sum of money this plaintiff wants to extract from Gartner because Gartner had the audacity to relegate its software to "niche player" status in the firm's legendary "Magic Quadrant."
On Friday, a judge in San Jose will hear arguments regarding Gartner's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed in May by ZL Technologies that seeks to not only eviscerate the Magic Quadrant but also punish Gartner severely for ever having foisted it upon the IT world. (That some of you are cheering grants ZL's case not a scintilla of validity, but point taken.) Read more
Last week it was "spider guy" admitting that he was the arsonist behind an Internet-fueled wildfire alleging that McDonald's short-sacked Aussie customers on purpose. And, oh, you may have heard about "balloon boy." Read more
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